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About the conductor

Thomas Dausgaard

Born in Denmark in 1963, THOMAS DAUSGAARD studied conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen and with Norman Del Mar at the Royal College of Music in London. He has taken part in masterclasses with Franco Ferrara, Leonard Bernstein and Hiroyuki Iwaki, and in 1991 he won a conducting fellowship to attend the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. He has won prizes at several international conducting competitions and in 1993 was awarded the Music Critics' Circle Prize in Denmark. In 1995 he completed a two-year appointment as Assistant Conductor to Seiji Ozawa at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Dausgaard appears regularly with the major Scandinavian orchestras, including the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Royal Danish Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Gothenburg Symphony. In December 1998 he replaced Gennadi Rozhdestvensky in four concerts with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra on tour in Germany and Austria. The tour included concerts at the Berlin Philharmonie and Vienna Konzerthaus, both of which met with rapturous receptions and critical acclaim.

In 1993 he replaced Carlo Maria Giulini in broadcast performances of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. In 1996 he conducted the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra on tour in Europe, replacing Sir Georg Solti. He was immediately re-invited by Yuri Temirkanov to conduct three more weeks of concerts with the orchestra in St. Petersburg.

Thomas Dausgaard took up the post of Music Director with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra in September 1997. Engagements this season included a performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and continuation of their major recording project of the complete Beethoven symphonies and concerti.

Other recent and forthcoming engagements include his debut last summer at the Mann Center with the Philadephia Orchestra, which was followed by a re-invitation for this summer. He conducted a new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Royal Danish Opera early this season; his next engagement with them will be a new production of Kunzen’s Holger Danske. After his debut with La Scala, Milan, he was immediately re-invited. In addition to engagements with the Scandinavian orchestras with whom he regularly works, Mr. Dausgaard will also perform in Britain with the BBC Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Forthcoming debuts in Europe include concerts with Bayerischer Rundfunk, Residentie Orkest, Hallé Orchestra and l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

Mr. Dausgaard records for Chandos Records, CPO, Dacapo, Simax and Stirling Records. His recording of Kunzen's opera Holger Danske received a Grammy nomination for “Best Opera Recording” in 1997. His most recent release, Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau (“The Mermaid”) and Sinfonietta, recorded with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra for Chandos Records, was awarded a Danish Grammy in 1999.